


Return the Favor

by TheGreatCatsby



Category: Psycho-Pass
Genre: Gen, post season one, season one spoilers, suicide ideation but not a lot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-11
Updated: 2019-05-11
Packaged: 2020-03-01 00:16:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,342
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18789166
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheGreatCatsby/pseuds/TheGreatCatsby
Summary: Sitting in the rehabilitation facility thinking about his future, Ginoza has to wonder: was it worth it?





	Return the Favor

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you auriond for asking me to write this! The prompt was "you have to live on." I love writing about Ginoza and Akane's relationship so I hope you all enjoy this!

In the past, Ginoza thought that if his crime coefficient rose to the levels of a latent criminal, his life would be over. He fought to keep it at acceptable levels at all costs, having seen what had happened to his father. Yet here he was in a rehabilitation facility, stuck in some kind of purgatory between his previous job and what might be his future and wondering if he’d be better off dead because there was no future. 

Had it been worth it?

Ginoza didn’t ask himself that question often because there hadn’t been much to ask it about. He did what he was supposed to do, performed his job well and within the parameters given to him by the System. He followed the Chief’s orders to the letter and only in recent months had everything start to fall apart. 

He’d neglected his own health and didn’t step back from the case that had overwhelmed him. He had truly believed that seeing it through to the end would solve everything, that it would get Kougami out of the obsessive rut he’d dug himself into. That it would restore order to the Division. That he’d get his friend back. 

Akane gave him hope. That was what he’d said to his therapist. Akane had been optimistic about the case. She, too, believed that maybe they could save Kougami. 

He’d sacrificed everything and for what? He’d lost his father, his arm, his friend, his job...he’d lost his life in every way except for actually being dead. 

For all of his anxieties and pessimism over the past few years, Ginoza had never considered himself suicidal. Right now, with nothing to do but think, he was edging dangerously close to the concept of suicide as an option. If he kept going like this he’s pass the question of “what is the point of all this?” and end up at “how can I take my own life?”

There was no hope, until there was. 

Akane arrived at the facility wanting to speak to him, and he latched on to that.

He’d never told her that she was a source of hope. Maybe one day he would. 

*

Akane was separated from him by thick glass. Ginoza had sat on her side of the table countless times before facing latent criminals, either for interrogation or to offer them an Enforcer position. He almost always came with someone else. 

Right now Akane was alone and he found it strange, but he also appreciated it. 

“Ginoza-san,” Alan’s said, and it felt like it had been too long since Ginoza had heard her say his name. Her voice had a light, calming quality to it. “How are you?”

“Not great,” Ginoza said. They both knew it was an understatement. “How’s...everything?”

“We’re in the process of finding a new Inspector,” Akane said. He had to appreciate her honesty. She must have realized he wouldn’t want her to avoid the topic. “Everyone is adjusting accordingly.”

“And are you adjusting?”

Akane looked tired. Exhausted. Ginoza looked at her and thought of the young wide-eyed girl he’d initially met who seemed so out of place with her environment. Now she looked worn down. And yet…

She looked like she belonged. She looked like she knew exactly what she was doing. She wore her competence well and Ginoza didn’t have any doubts that this was where she was meant to be.

“Ginoza-san,” Akane said, taking a deep breath. “When Kougami became an Enforcer, how did you adjust?” 

Ginoza was surprised by the question, though perhaps he shouldn’t have been. Kougami had made a conscious choice both times — last time to pursue a case he knew would cloud his hue, and this time to leave. 

“Not well,” Ginoza said. “You saw the aftermath of that, though. I was angry and I didn’t bother to understand why he would let his crime coefficient get so bad for the sake of a case. It was one case and a dead man versus his whole life and everyone in it. It’s ironic that I’ve ended up the same way.”

Akane nodded. Ginoza found himself thinking over that, and over what had happened with this case. Makishima had taken so much from them, had fractured Division One to the point where it was unrecognizable. If the first case had shaken Division One, this one had all but destroyed it. 

The thought that had been plaguing him returned as he looked at Akane. She had probably come to the same conclusion as him. She was essentially dealing with the restructuring of the whole division rather than adjusting to the death of one and the movement of another, and she had lost so much that was important to her. He had too. 

The last time, he had asked Kougami a question that he already thought he had an answer to. Kougami had a different answer and they never quite agreed. This time around, he wasn’t so sure. 

“Was it worth it?” he blurted out. 

Akane’s eyes widened as she was torn out of her thoughts and thrust into new ones. She considered the question, something in her expression changing. Ginoza imagined that she was thinking of the loss of her friend, of Kagari, of his father. She was likely thinking of how Kougami had left and how Ginoza would no longer be by her side as her equal. 

“How can it not be?” she asked. 

Ginoza stared at her. There were many ways that it could not be worth it. He opened his mouth to start listing them, but she interrupted. 

“We have no choice but to make it worth it,” she said, her expression set in that stubborn look that Ginoza had come to recognize and in some ways admire. She kept it in the face of danger, no matter how bleak things seemed. Her tenacity had played a huge part in bringing the Makishima case to its end. “What else are we supposed to do?” 

It sounded so simple when she said it. He couldn’t wrap his mind around it. 

Hadn’t he answered that question, though? What else was he supposed to do? Die? Rot away in this facility? Those things weren’t good options, even if he felt that they were the only things he was capable of doing. 

There was the third option, one that he hadn’t let himself think too much about because it went against everything he’d worked for. He promised never to become like his father, yet in the end his father had saved him. He’d been there when it mattered most, made the sacrifice that mattered most, and being an Enforcer allowed him to do that. 

He knew in that moment that Akane was going to continue what she’d been doing. She’d stay on as an Inspector for Division One, keep working hard, form a new team around herself and be a good leader for them. A team of people she needed to trust with her life, like Ginoza, for all his talk about dogs, had trusted the Enforcers with his. 

“You’re here to offer me the Enforcer job, aren’t you?”

“Yes,” Akane said. “But also to see how you were doing. You don’t have to decide right now.” 

“I think I do,” Ginoza said. “Like you said, there isn’t really a choice, is there? I need to make it worth it and to do that I need to keep living a life that is useful. The only other options are dying and being in here, which is as good as death anyway, so I have to live.” 

Part of him was saying those words because he felt he had to and part of him thought they were true. Maybe one day he’d believe they were true entirely. 

Akane stared at him for a moment as she processed those words, and then she broke into a smile that brightened the whole room. Ginoza found that he wanted to see that smile more often. 

Akane gave him hope. He wanted to give her something in return.


End file.
